moon-struck....harry james potter

4.10| disputes & dragons

4.10|disputes & dragons

It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up. The days until the first task seemed to slip by as though someone had fixed the clocks to work at double speed.

"C'mon, we need to get back before dad has to talk to us" Alex said to Harry. Hagrid had told them to meet him at midnight, wearing Harry's invisibility cloak. They rushed out at half past eleven, under the invisibility cloak. The grounds were very dark. Harry and Alex walked down the lawn toward the lights shining in Hagrid's cabin. The inside of the enormous Beauxbatons carriage was also lit up; they could hear Madame Maxime talking inside it as Harry knocked on Hagrid's front door.

"Harry? Alex?" Hagrid whispered, opening the door and looking around.

"Yeah" said Harry, slipping inside the cabin and pulling the cloak down off his head.

"What's up?" Alex said.

"Got summthin' ter show yeh" said Hagrid. There was an air of enormous excitement about Hagrid. He was wearing a flower that resembled an oversized artichoke in his buttonhole. It looked as though he had abandoned the use of axle grease, but he had certainly attempted to comb his hair

"Come with me, keep quiet, an' keep yerself covered with that cloak" said Hagrid. "We won' take Fang, he won' like it"

"Hagrid" Alex said, exchanging a worried look with Harry. "We don't have much time-" but he wasn't listening; he was opening the cabin door and striding off into the night. The two shook their heads and followed him.

"Is he leading us to the Beauxbatons carriage?"

"Shhh!" said Hagrid, and he knocked three times on the door bearing the crossed golden wands. Madame Maxime opened it. She was wearing a silk shawl wrapped around her massive shoulders. She smiled when she saw Hagrid.

"Ah, 'Agrid, it is time?"

"Bong-sewer" said Hagrid, beaming at her, and holding out a hand to help her down the golden steps. Madame Maxime closed the door behind her, Hagrid offered her his arm, and they set off around the edge of the paddock containing Madame Maxime's giant winged horses, with Alex and Harry, totally bewildered, running to keep up with them. Had Hagrid wanted to show them Madame Maxime? They could see her any old time they wanted, she wasn't exactly hard to miss. But it seemed that Madame Maxime was in for the same treat as Alex and Harry, because after a while she said playfully, "Wair is it you are taking me, 'Agrid?"

"Yeh'll enjoy this" said Hagrid gruffly, "worth seein', trust me. On'y - don' go tellin' anyone I showed yeh, right? Yeh're not s'posed ter know"

"Of course not" said Madame Maxime, fluttering her long black eyelashes. Alex groaned in annoyance as they two kept jogging to keep up with them.

"If it takes any longer" Harry said. "We'll leave. We'll turn around, go straight back to the castle, and leave Hagrid to enjoy his moonlit stroll with Madame Maxime"

But then - when they had walked so far around the perimeter of the forest that the castle and the lake were out of sight - Harry And Alex heard something. Men were shouting up ahead, then came a deafening, earsplitting roar. Hagrid led Madame Maxime around a clump of trees and came to a halt- for a split second, Alex Thought she was seeing bonfires, and men darting around them - and then her mouth fell open.

Dragons.

She looked over to Harry and his jaw was on the floor. Five fully grown, enormous, vicious-looking dragons were rearing onto their hind legs inside an enclosure fenced with thick planks of wood, roaring and snorting - torrents of fire were shooting into the dark sky from their open, fanged mouths, fifty feet above the ground on their outstretched necks